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Boiled Fowl

A whole fowl boiled with lemon, salt, onion, herbs, pepper, and optional bacon and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the fowl in tepid water with the juice of a lemon.

  2. Rub the fowl with half a lemon.

Boil

  1. Place the fowl in a pot of boiling water.

  2. Add onion, sweet herbs, whole pepper, and salt to the pot.

  3. Remove any scum that rises to the surface.

  4. Cover the pot with a round of buttered paper and place the lid on tightly.

  5. Boil the fowl slowly until cooked through.

  6. Parboil the fowl.

Finish

  1. Wrap it in slices of fat bacon.

  2. Finish cooking in boiling water with vegetables.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks in simmering water.
Lemon
Its juice brightens the flavour and helps freshen the surface of the bird.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and the cooking water throughout the bird.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that keeps the lean meat moist as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness, and buttered paper helps trap steam against the surface.

The step that matters

Boil the fowl slowly until cooked through. Vigorous boiling toughens and breaks up the meat's proteins, so a gentle simmer keeps the flesh tender and moist while it cooks through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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